


Iron Age

by 19Thedas80 (VictoryRoad)



Series: 19Thedas80 [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Modern Thedas, More explicit than the other 19Thedas80 works - be warned, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:56:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoryRoad/pseuds/19Thedas80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1981, and Iron Bull sits in an empty bar telling Lavellan, Leliana and Sera all about the 1970s - specifically his time near the Tevinter border, in a bustling border town called Trevis.  He likes to embellish slightly. He also likes to see them squirm when he gets to the filthy parts - though Sera mostly just laughs.</p><p>It's a story of three things: One, how the chargers came together before becoming most imposing collegiate sports teams in Thedas. Two, what it was like for Bull to be out on his own a queer kid in the 70s. Third, how he met Krem, and the long road that led them there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Candle

The Herald’s Rest was quiet tonight – maybe a little too quiet. True, it was early, but Haven Street was a, well, Haven for folks like Lavellan who needed any sanctuary from their daily lives. Yet here she was, miraculously sitting in a booth which was typically reserved for sneaking drugs and making out, and the only other folk in the place were largely hiding out from the real world. Before long, surely, the club would explode into life and she, as she so often longed for, would fade into obscurity among a crowd of her peers.

She was surprised to see The Iron Bull walk in alone, but didn’t bat an eyelid when he waved at her in self-invitation. It was a familiar ritual, a little flick of the hand that says ‘I’ll join you’, and Squire let herself sink into the booth a little knowing that her obscurity would take a little while yet. He approached with a beer, which he toasted to her gin and tonic, while sliding into the relatively cramped booth.

“How’s it going, boss?” He asked, a wry smile on his face. She didn’t really know him – he was a stray she’d picked up down at the Storm Coast, the Oceanside boardwalk north of the Redcliffe City Centre. The weather had fit the name, which the locals always insisted it rarely did, and he had recognised her from everything that had happened at the University of Fereldan Skyhold-Haven. It was fair – there had been a lot of commotion, and she was quite publicly at the centre of it.

They shared a few simple drinks, laughing at bad jokes and sharing awkward smalltalk about how quiet the Rest was tonight. This was not unexpected – the pair had little in common. He was large and imposing, she was small and lithe. She knew he played football, but that was about the extent of it.

“Tell me about yourself,” She finally said, leaning back in her seat. “I should know more about you if we’re going to work together in Cassandra’s Inquisition.”

“Not much to tell,” He said with a wry smile, “Unless you like thrilling stories about the seedy underbelly of the Tevinter-Orlesian-Nevarran border.” That piqued Lavellan’s curiosity somewhat. _Seedy underbelly?_ It was probably a joke, but Bull seemed somewhat more straight-forward than she was used to. What he deemed _seedy_ was probably very, very much the sort of story that befitted a strong round of drinks. She waved for a refreshment, which arrived promptly as Bull settled into telling his tale.

*****

There’s a little town called Trevis that falls at the triple point between Orlais, Nevarra and the Tevinter Imperium. No one really goes there, despite of this, because for the most part it’s in Nevarran territory. Everyone’s worried the other two nations are going to ‘leak in’, rather than seeing it for what it is – a liminal space. That’s what I was looking for at the time, something there yet not, somewhere a body could go when it was too far from home to know any better. Turns out I was not the only one. Trevis has a lot of things, but the biggest surprises came in the form of the queers. Nevarra, bless its sun-scorched heart, has never held much stock in criminalising love. It’s always been a refuge of that sort, even if the social mores didn’t actually extend as far as people suggest. Being at this strange halfway point between countries, and yet somewhere you were conceptually free to be yourself, it was pretty certain that eventually any queer near those borders would slip over to Nevarra to see for themselves. Add the ‘danger’ of mixing with Vints or Lesions, and you have a full melting pot.

It was 1970, the Warden party was losing the most important election in Fereldan history, and my ass looked amazing in acid-washed denim.

I had a few places I liked to go, most of them on Candlekeep’s Way. It used to be an old trading centre, just out from the marketplace where carts would ride in and out of town with goods and wares. Now, of course, it’s several hundred years later, and all of that takes the main road affectionately called – of course – _Main Road._ The Candle, as everyone inevitably calls it because some smug git five drinks in to an eight drink minimum has slurred it at them too many times, is in that weird détente between itself and the rest of the city. Sort of like Haven Street, or Boisvert Avenue in Val Royeaux. Everyone _knows_ that’s where the queers hang out, but it’s also a bustling precinct of its own. Some come to gawk, others just to buy cheap second-hand clothes or flowers or whatever new thing is all the rage back in the regular world.

The Candle, though, is a special kind of place. You walk those streets feeling like a king – and you better, because if you’re the right kind of guy every eye on every guy is staring at you. Sure, there’s plenty of women who go both ways, but they mostly hang out at the bars down the Avvar end. Little Frostback, it’s a weird thing to find in the middle of three northern-ish countries, but what are you gonna do? Avvar labour was cheap and affordable, back when the blight all but killed their economy. Like I said, Trevis was a middle place, everyone ends up there somehow. Butch Night at Storvacker’s is a riot, I once saw someone get fisted in the middle of the floor while a particularly strong-looking elvhen woman took bets on how long it’d take to get the girl where everybody wanted her to get. Anyway, I’m getting off topic.

Down one end of the Candle you’ve got the places I used to frequent – Bellanaris was a pretty good place, lots of middle-of-the-road disco, but the floor was pretty much all Elves and Elf-chasers. I’ve nothing against Elves, of course, but it’s that minority-within-a-minority thing, you know? When you flick through the Gazette to the personals section and find a hundred ads with “No Knives, No Horns, No Halfs,” you understand. I’d have probably spent all my time in a Qunari bar, if that sort of thing existed. There’s Tal Vashoth there, don’t get me wrong, but we’re more a café and marketplace type. I spent a lot of my days at this Café run by the skinniest Tal you’ve ever seen – called himself Rion. He made a mean cup of coffee, something I mean very literally. The first time I drank it, I think I got drunk. There was one of those Old Wives Tales that the local cops used to stop intoxicated folk and ask if they’d been to Parshaara. Either way, they’d had enough. I know that was just a story, though. The cops were too busy raiding places to care if we were actually drunk. Anyway, he was an older guy and I only went for those on certain occasions – I’m told he had a pretty impressive cock for such a skinny guy, and that it went like a fountain too. Honestly, though, I think I just notice age more on other Qunari than I do others. Felt like leering at a grandfather.

*****

Lavellan narrowed her eyes, wondering about this. There was a certain something not quite adding up, though it explained a few lines on Bull’s face.

“How old _are_ you, Bull?” She asked, and was met with a loud and guffawing sound.

“Gee, Boss, you don’t fuck around, do you?” The Iron Bull took a swig of his beer and appeared to do some mental math. It was all for show, but the game of it was Lavellan not truly knowing whether it was real or not. “I was 18 then. That was 1970. Before age equivalence brought the fuckin’ age down from 25, too, so it was doubly illegal. Guess I must be around 29 or so now.”

Lavellan’s face didn’t exactly crack, but Bull could tell that she was stifling a smile just to withhold from him that extra bit of smug satisfaction.

*****

My personal favourite, though, was The Garrison. It was supposedly what it says on the tin, an old military garrison that was torn down and had a shopping precinct built over it, but that was probably true of most of the street. That was why the merchants came that way, theoretically – incoming goods had to be inspected, and even on the border no one could really be bothered working far from home. This was mostly conjecture, though. There was no grand history of Trevis then, although it’s talked about with the kind of reverence in certain circles the way that the Kirwall Bay area is. A sort of Kirkwall-of-the-West, yet another place in desperate need of a Chantry. Well, I guess Kirkwall _had_ one.

Anyway, the Garrison was pretty much what you’d expect from a place that wanted to be military themed – very little of the décor was, outside of a few tacky photographs; it was a hunting lodge with a dance floor, for want of a better term. I liked the atmosphere of it, and the certain way that it felt ridiculously masculine to the point of overdoing it. The Qun lends itself to masculinity – there are camp Qunari, and camp-er Tal Vashoth, but it’s pretty hard to deny we like our sport, our war, and our aggression. So, there I am, dancing to tacky b-sides from disco albums that felt dated before disco was even a thing, and I just felt… complete, you know? The bullshit of home, but welcoming of the Bull. You couldn’t pay for better. Plenty of guys did pay, though. There were hustlers up and down every other wall of the bars in the Candle. I didn’t trick, but if a guy got the wrong idea and handed me a few hundred dollars to wipe my face off with afterwards, I wasn’t going to say no.

*****

“You might be wondering where I’m going with this – well, it’s pretty straight forward, actually, though there’s a few twists and turns.” Bull finished off his beer before signalling for another, something the barkeep seemed more than happy to oblige. The poor woman was probably losing her mind in the quiet hours. They were still the only souls in the house, side from the odd fixture. “This is the story of three things,” Bull intoned, listing them on his fingers. “The first is why I’m a one-eyed handsome 30-something college football player, and not a two-eyed one.” He laughed, though Lavellan wasn’t sure if she found it a friendly joke or a for-himself-only one.

“The second is why only half the Chargers even go to school here.” That was something Squire had to admit she hadn’t really thought about – she wasn’t even sure she knew that. She knew that Bull had set up half of UF-Skyhold-Haven’s football program as a recreational thing a few years back that the faculty absorbed when they defeated U-of-Denerim in a rousing-if-onesided friendly match. That they were still only half a university team seemed oddly fitting.

“The third, and you’ll like this one, is how I single-handedly defeated an army with nothing but the power of dance.” Lavellan looked confused, a disbelieving expression betraying her weariness. “Alright, fine. But I did help the elves stop Bellanaris from being closed by a vice squad. All of that takes some getting to though. You ready?”

Squire leaned back in her seat, raising a hand in mock disaffection. “You tell me.”

*****

The most important thing about the Garrison, besides making me feel not quite so out of place, was that it attracted a lot of other male-types. Masculine lads who wanted to chug beer, dance with other men and dance with their shirts off for no other reason than to prove they’re buff. I was doing just that, and don’t forget I look fan-fucking-tastic with my shirt off, when two things happened. One was this older, bearish type trying to get all up on me while this awful Zither b-side played. He wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t what I was looking for that night. I’m not sure what mood I was in, only that fumbling with some daddy who didn’t really know what to do with a Qunari sounded like a bad time.

The second, though? That was when he walked in. He was young, a little fey, possibly trying a little too hard, but boy – so was everybody else. He fit right in, and he stood right out for it. He was probably the only other person there who really wanted to be a part of that too-manly-for-its-own-good crap like I did. That was Krem, you know, the sort-of medium-tall guy who plays for the Chargers. We didn’t actually even get around to talking until weeks later. I don’t know if he knew I was there.

I knew one thing, though – I thought he looked like an asshole.


	2. The Raid

Let me back up a little bit – see, that wasn’t the first time I’d actually seen him either. The first time was pretty surreal, and it took me a while to process that he was there. We knew each other by the time I realised, but it feels like some integral part of the puzzle now.

There was this Avvar guy, Tolvir, who I got with sometimes. That doesn’t sound right – g _ot with_ makes it sound like we were meeting for movies and popcorn. We were _meating,_ in that other sense. Tolvir was a powerbottom before there was really a word for that – he liked to frequent a sauna a bit closer to the butch end of the Candle. Saunas in those days were pretty much the same as they had ever been, just rooms of men getting to know other men in ways the maker probably disapproves of. Tolvir was something of a serial sauna-goer, and we struck up what was at first a passing acquaintance. I went there because it reminded me of the humidity back home, but he was just there for the cock. That was fair, really, and in many ways I was stepping on his territory by going there for anything but that. It didn't take long for me to take up with the other ‘casuals’ of the sauna set, though.

So there we were one day, in a closed room making the most of the sweat and the moisture in ways that were awful and unsafe but you fell into anyway. I’m slapping against him, he’s moaning away, and suddenly there’s this skinny little head sticking in through the door. He’s yelling about the Templars, and suddenly the rhythm I had going was more harm than good. Tolvir’s spooked, I’m spooked, and we both kind of topple onto the awful wooden slats. This wasn’t pleasant – I’m rock hard, he’s banged himself up against the wall as he scrambled back, and we’re hurriedly trying to make it look like we _weren’t_ just fucking like rabbits.

*

Lavellan rested her face in her hands, soaking in exactly what Bull was saying. She took a breath, tried to speak, but couldn’t. The burly footballer knew exactly what her expression meant, and leaned back in his seat.

“Sorry Boss, I guess I got carried away.” He looked sheepish, but Squire met his sudden reluctance with the waving of hands.

“No, no! No!” She said, trying to find words that felt had been thrust out of her, “I, uh…”

“What’s up, kids?” Came a perky voice, as Sera slid into the booth beside Squire. “The Lord of Bald Manor was looking for you, Lady Herald.” She had a wry look on her face, which Lavellan couldn’t bring herself to meet with derision. “Woah, nothing? Not even a glare? I thought you two were… What on Earth did I just walk in on?”

“I was telling a story.” Bull was direct, almost matter-of-fact about it. “About my time in Trevis.”

“Trevis? Trevis is naff. Kids go to Trevis.” The look of indignation on Bull’s face was so over-the-top that Squire’s fugue broke, her laugh echoing loud and sudden through the still empty bar.

“Trevis was one of the most important centres of queer culture outside of Kirkwall! Outside of Denerim Market! As much as –” Bull began, a rant cut off by the sudden appearance of another beer.

“Drink that and settle down,” Leliana’s lilting voice interrupted. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Sera said with a resigned, almost child-like denial. “I just said Trevis was for kids.”

“It is,” Leliana replied, pulling up a chair, “But we were all kids once. Right, Bull?” She raised a glass of her own, to which the Iron Bull reluctantly toasted.

“That we were.”

“Bull was telling me all about his past – or, at least the scandalous parts.” Lavellan finally interjected, her composure returned. “I admit the Dales were a bit more conservative.” She took large gulp, before summoning the courage to catch them up. “He was just about to say how he met Krem, and it involved him fucking a pow… power...?”

“An Avvar powerbottom. Name of Tolvir. We were in a bathhouse that was getting raided.”

“Oh wow,” Leliana replied, folding her arms, “It’s been a while since that happened to me.” She shot Bull a smirk that he returned, but Sera rolled her eyes.

“If you’re going to tell a cock story, tell it. Otherwise buy another round.” Sometimes, Squire thought, Sera could get right to the heart of the matter.

“Right, where was I… Oh yeah, so, we’d just been told by this elf who interrupted us that the Templars were making the rounds.”

*

What you need to know about Templar raids is that even in the crackdowns, there still had to be reasonable doubt. A notorious bathhouse was still open to members of the public, and while there were plenty who were willing to make shit up just to deal to the queers, most days you got lucky. We’re sitting there, towelled up, praying they don’t notice the fact that my Warhammer hasn’t hidden itself too well under the pretty thin cotton, trying to make idle conversation like we’re just two chatty sauna goers. This was enough maybe four out of five times. If you were there during the fifth raid? You may as well have flipped a coin.

The Templar who entered our stall that day was a pretty sturdy guy – younger, muscle and a slight layer of fat, the kind which seemed to be athletic in origin. Lots of carbs at every meal for muscle growth, that sort of thing. He steps in, looks at us with a sneer, and then turns to the Avvar.

“Tolvir,” He says with a nod. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Always,” The Avvar replies with a shit-eating grin. I hadn’t been through many raids at this point. My heart is threatening to burst out of my chest. Good Qunari boys don’t get arrested for public indecency, even if that ‘public’ part happens to be in a private establishment. Vice squads don’t really care, and we all know the police were happy to give pursuing us over to the magical constabulary the minute us dreadful queers stopped meeting exclusively in salons and the backrooms of bookshops.

I didn’t know the guy yet, but we had something of a shining star over us. Turns out that this Templar wasn’t just a pretty face – he was one of us, a frequenter of the Candle who wore the outfit for a day-job. Then, though, he was just terrifying to me, the prospective of being thrown behind bars for public indecency shutting a lot of doors I was only suddenly considering. Tolvir’s calm, though, helped pull apart the knot that was growing in my back. Our inspector chuckled, nodded at me calmly, then let his dirty brown hair disappear back behind the slatted door. It was hard to tell if I was sweating from the sauna or the raid, but the reality of it all was setting in now. I looked at Tolvir, he looked at me, and in the moment I panicked and left the room before he could speak.

Dressed and ready for fresh air, I discovered that we weren’t just lucky – we’d apparently won a coin flip. A wagon was stationed outside, and the One Of Us was helping a pair of human men into the back of it. Handcuffs look so fucking stupid, you know? They look worse on the naked.

“They can’t do this,” One of my fellow gawkers said to no one in particular. Truth is that it didn’t matter. The political situation wasn’t going to exonerate anyone charged with a moral crime. That took a lot of years, and a lot of work.

*

“You’re welcome,” Leliana mugged, but it fell on mostly deaf ears. There was a tone-deafness to it, but Squire couldn’t blame her for a slip in her otherwise hyper-constructed exterior. This wasn’t something anyone wanted to really deal with. “Though I admit nothing has truly changed, has it? No more raids for the sake of raids, but the police presence here still isn’t friendly.”

“Rich tits will bugger whoever they want, it’s our fault for not having money apparently.” Sera scoffed. “Even that king who tried to fix it only really legalised it. Lots more to being a real functioning human than who you diddle.” Leliana’s fingers gripped her glass tightly, her face growing somewhat dark as the elf’s words hung in the air.

“You’re right,” She said, the lilt of her accent cut slightly by despondency. “King Alastair tries, but that is not enough. Empress Celene wants to try, but it is not enough.” There was a quiet silence for a moment, scored only by the clatter of barware in the distance.

“It never is,” Bull added.

*

It’s never enough for one person to act. There were three people loading those men into that wagon – one was Torren Silvers, who I would later high five in the middle of a room of writhing people. Then there was Krem, who at that point was just Lieutenant Aclassi. He was a good man, but he couldn’t afford to misstep. He was already risking too much just to live. The third man, though? I’ll never forget his smug face for as long as I live. Captain Degan Tollman, Candlefucker. It wasn’t a subtle name, but it’s what he did with vigor and malice.

Krem, I should point out, drops out of this story for a little while now. I see him around, but he’s in the vice squad, so I’m not really looking for him. The opposite, in fact. How we came to be in the same bar, with me staring at him like a child who’d just been told not to stare at the sun… That needs a little diversion first. See, I was one of those awkwardly political types. That’s why I joined up with the Inquisition, among other reasons. In Trevis, I had not wanted to be political. In fact, I just wanted to dance and drink and fuck, and all the other things that I had spent my time on Seheron not doing. Trevis, for me, was something of a lifestyle catharsis. I was doing everything I could as much as was possible, and didn’t really pay attention to anything which didn’t help me with the dancing and drinking and fucking I mentioned earlier.

I had this job working out of a grocery store about half a block from the candle itself. It made for a pretty small circle that I waked every day – I woke up in an apartment I shared with this Dalish guy who’d moved here to get away from what he called ‘Life’s Vallaslin’,  which honestly I thought was pretty dramatic, but he was a pretty dramatic guy in the grand scheme of things. I’d walk a block down, turn on Abbot’s Lane, then hit a hard right into Horizon Alley. Horizon was a pretty dramatic name for what was basically a plaza of shops built out of a few old buildings that got torn down in the 50s. They turned a thoroughfare into a shopping precinct, but that was only so good if you could get there. So I was the delivery boy, forgoing a life of chasing cheques to schlep bags across by arms and deliver them to the elderly, the infirm, and the idle rich.

I met a lot of interesting people just from being a delivery boy, but it didn’t really do much for me. I’d load up, walk a block or five, maybe drive if it was really far, and then come back to the store to sit around or help stock the shelves. The store was owned by this old Dwarven guy, Malhen, who used to sneak into the backroom whenever the month’s pornography arrived. We all knew what he was doing, but it made it that much easier for old perverts like myself to flick through the other magazines as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an equal opportunity guy, but I would always go straight for _Serpents,_ a Nevarran magazine whose offices were at the end of the Candle. They hired local guys for the shoots so the longer I was in Trevis, the quicker it became a game of ‘Spot the familiar face’. I used to bond over this with one of my co-workers. He was young, a little stocky, and always too hard on himself. His name was Aidan, a human who’d work register and slide me the occasional candy bar he’d liberated without Malhen looking.

Anyway, one month Aidan’s looking kinda weird when the porn comes in, and so we go through the ritual. Malhen disappears, I leaf through looking for _Serpents,_ and there on the cover is this guy who’s just gripping his dick like it’s about to fall off. Aidan looks at me, I look at him, and finally I ask him what’s wrong. He says it’s his boyfriend. I roll my eyes, but Aidan shoots me a look.

“Damn,” I said, readjusting myself to the standards of others, “You need a goddamn drink.”


	3. The Club, The Song, The Cop And His Dealer.

It was Uniform night at the _Masque_ , a real Highway-trash scene supposedly started by some exiled duke from Orlais. Once, over a drink, I think someone who knew someone who fucked someone else once told me that he was actually from about 50 miles down the road, some cute little village called Caimen Brea that’s all hedgerows and Church-on-Sundays. If you’re plotting the map, Trevis is about 200 or so miles north of Hunter Fell, so it’s a little ways on from there. I’d never been though, I’m not a big fan of those places. They tend to love three things: each other, the Maker, and keeping an eye on the troublemakers who roll into town unannounced. Trevis, for whatever faults it might have had, at least welcomed anyone who had a couple of coins in their pocket.

Anyway, I’m in the Masque, and Aidan’s the only person other than me who isn’t in a uniform. We don’t get in for free. I’m slightly exaggerating – Uniforms just got you half-priced drinks and no cover, so there were others here who couldn’t be arsed, but we _feel_ like we’re the only civilians in the place.  Honestly, I still find the masquerading as Cops and Templars a little revolting. A fetish is a fetish, but a broken face is a thing of its own too.

We’re slugging back what we were actually there for – beer. I don’t know how many we drank that night, though it was definitely an ambitious number. One of those ones that sounds low until you do the mental math, and realise your brain just assumes a thousand of anything is ‘a lot’. Aidan was definitely a long way off a thousand. Qunari folk can hold their liquor a lot better than humans, that’s for sure, and he was sloppy around the time I was feeling a solid slur coming on.

“Is it me?” He asked around six or seven drinks in, “Am I unlovable?” See, I get monogamy. Don’t get me wrong, I _really_ get it. I get the understanding of the other person, I get the rhythms and the balances, but the Candle isn’t a place for that. See, you get a group of people, you say time and time again that they’re somehow fundamentally wrong, you exclude them from the peculiarities of your systems, and suddenly the whole thing looks suspicious.

That doesn’t mean you don’t buy into the world outside the Candle, you know? It doesn’t mean you’re done with wanting a sliver of what everyone else has just because you _can_ fuck around, just because you _can_ spend nights drinking with people like yourself in a cordoned off area where the Good People don’t go. I was built for the Candle. The Qun fits alongside self-exile pretty well. Aidan, though… He was built for a life he thought he was going to get. A nice house somewhere in Val Chevin, Montfort… Maybe a little two bedroom apartment in the outer Halamshiral suburbs, something nestled nice and tight alongside the bridge between it and Val Royeaux. I always forget what it’s called, all I remember is that it’s old and named for someone older than it.

*

“Pfft, houses are boring.” Sera’s tone was snide, dismissive. It rankled slightly with Lavellan, but not in the way she expected. She understood not wanting to be part of a system. What she had not expected was how much of her reaction came from her own longing, a memory of Dalish life. Her family had travelled, settled, and been moved on by townsfolk who did not wanted them. She had been sold an idea of stability. Though it surprised her to admit to herself, she had come to hope for it.

“They are. Give me life, any day.” Bull’s reaction was unexpected to her, too, given his speech about the virtues of a life like Aidan’s.

“One day,” Leliana said to herself, “We might even get to choose.” A few pieces clicked into place in Squire’s mind, and she decided instead to remain silent.

*

“You’re plenty lovable, man,” I finally said to him after what felt like an eternity. He just dropped something of an existential bomb on me, I wasn’t really sure what else to say. Don’t get me wrong, he was hot dude, but I wasn’t looking to fuck him. I _definitely_ wasn’t looking to fuck him while plastered at Uniform night while he mourned the breakup he hadn’t even had yet.

“Yeah, well tell that to Barry.” _Barry._ What a name. Human names are so precious sometimes. “Every man in the Candle has seen his dick now, all because he doesn’t see me as worthwhile enough to treat as _special_.”

“Hey, _hey._ ” I pushed him at this point, a little harder than I probably should have, but he was fine. The booze had turned it into one of those ‘what just happened?’ moments. “You’re special, man. You’re Maker-fuckin’ special. There’s two things at play, right?” Aidan’s eyes followed my two fingers with an alcoholic laziness. “Either he doesn’t like you enough, which means _good fucking riddance_ before it goes too far. The other option? You two are on different pages. He doesn’t see this as being the big deal you do. Honestly?” I took a drink. I’m like 90% certain I did it for effect, too, as if I wasn’t sure enough that I was giving an ‘important speech’ to the poor guy. He probably thought I was just being an asshole. “If that’s the case, and you’re just incompatible, better you find out now. There are much better ways, and he’s a bastard for not just _asking_ you if it was OK, but that’s just something else about him you found out in time.”

“Bull,” he sighed, slumping against the bar, “I fuckin’ _loved_ him, I think, you know?”

“I know,” I said, turning back to the bar with a hand on his back. “Trust me on this one: I really fuckin’ know.”

We ended up dancing with a couple dressed as firemen – apparently they were off-duty, and just looking to drink, but there was something about the stitching on the costumes that made me a little dubious. Either way, Aidan sure as hell wasn’t going home with either of them, and with the state he was in, it was pretty clear I had to take him home myself. The dancing was a salve, though, and it helped burn off a little of the alcohol that was otherwise putting Aidan at puke’s door.

You ever remember weird songs for no reason? Somehow, despite it being the least important thing, I remember that we were dancing to one of those high-tempo Ferelpop songs that was just sort of on the way out back then. You know, a late-60s hangover that any self-respecting gay bar knew better than to play to a room of artifice-loving trendy queens, but everyone was too drunk to really process it. Instead, we had a great time. It was jangly, upbeat, fun, and even though I remember the song I can’t remember the name. I think I have the album, actually, though it’s probably seen better days. I think it’s by The Harts. Yeah, that was it. The Harts. ‘ _Her Song’._

*

Leliana had gone very quiet all of a sudden, and to Squire’s surprise it was Sera who had noticed first.

“You OK, sister grim?” She asked, startling the red-haired woman somewhat. She brushed the hair from her face, restoring herself to something resembling her natural state.

“Of course. I… I knew the singer. Her name was Marjolaine, though I haven’t…” The thought caught in her throat momentarily, “She died.”

“My sympathies, Sister. You were something of a star yourself, weren’t you?” Bull asked, though his tone clearly suggested he was trying to change the subject. It seemed slightly too lateral to Lavellan. Leliana’s face didn’t change, and she knew she was right.

“Yes. I had spent many years in smoke-ridden clubs trying to make it before I joined the church… though I lasted longer in music. After the church, it was the Warden Party and, well, the church again.” Her smile returned somewhat, the pale expression that had grown softening to her natural pink, “I was no star, though. I was playing to anyone who would listen in a Lothering tavern when I finally decided to give it all up.” She sighed, nostalgia in her eyes. “That would have been just before your story. I was a fresh-faced girl of 15 when I had signed up with The Harts, and by the time I was playing dives in Lothering, I was a little older yet no wiser.”

“You buried the lede there,” Bull replied, slapping his knee, “You never said you were actually _in_ the damn Harts!” He laughed a hearty laugh, before Leliana’s faltering expression gave him pause. “Maybe… Maybe you can tell us that story sometime, he said.”

“Or at least give us a taste,” Sera quipped with a wry smile. Leliana nodded half-heartedly, and Bull resumed his tale.

*

So we’re dancing to Ferelpop, having a grand old time, and like, I remember this song. I remember the exact beat of it when we turn around and bump into Stitches. You know, Stitches, from my Chargers. He’s one of the rare few who followed me all the way from Trevis, and at this point I’d met him only once before. He was working at the local clinic, mostly taking names for those waiting for tests. Even then, people were pretty terrified of the blight. It destroyed whole communities, and the spectre of asymptomatic carriers wasn’t doing anyone any favors. I’d met Stitches the last time I’d been in, and when he turned around it was like staring at Death. I was sure he’d followed me all the way there just to tell me my results were bad.

The truth was, he was just having a good time. Of _course_ that was the truth of it – it was hardly going to be anything else, not in the middle of a club while The Harts was playing. Finding out there and then would be a lot worse than the blight.

Stitches is only about halfway through med school now, but even back then he was pretty sure it was his calling. Aidan, drunk as he was, did what just about everyone’s done at some point on a particularly messy night. We step out of the _Masque_ around midnight, stumbling down the cobblestone sidewalk as Stitches keeps telling us all about the fun shit he has at home. We could smoke, we could watch porn, we could flick through his dubiously-acquired medical journals looking at the gross photos, we could interrupt his roommate’s latest sexual conquest – the roommate, by the way, is another charger, you know her as Dalish, but we’ll get to her later. All of these sounded like great ideas, and Aidan was more than eager to just sit down and do something that would make his head stop spinning.

That’s how he ends up on the sidewalk, face bleeding because he’s tripped over a planter outside the Flower shop about halfway down the Candle.

Stitches makes the executive call here, and we drag him back to the would-be doctor’s tiny little two-bedroom. It was actually slightly further away than my own place, but he had far more pilfered medical supplies than I do. Honestly, between us, I’m not sure _why_ Stitches took home so much from his work, but he was pretty good with gauze and tape. Aidan, fortunately, hadn’t broken anything or really torn his face open. He’d just scraped his cheek, and in the harsh light of anything-but-moonlight, the torrent of blood running down him turned pretty quickly into that light patina that forms when you’ve scraped yourself but it’s not really deep enough to do much more than blot.  

With the poor kid resting on the couch, I decided to step out onto the fire escape for fresh air. Stitches joins me, offers me a joint that I politely declined for ‘I’m already fucking drunk’ reasons, and we just sit there for a while. Through thin walls, I can hear Dalish having the time of her life.

“Ignore it,” He tells me, and I do. I’ve gotten pretty good at being discrete about people making do with what they can. We sat there for a little while, just chatting. It was the first real time we’d spoken. We’d become better friends later, but for now it was just one of those random things – some stranger, making nice. We were mostly talking shit. Like I said, I only really remember hearing The Harts in that club, the rest of the night is mostly a blur. Big events – getting drunk, bumping into stitches, Aidan getting hurt, patching him back up. I’m only even fairly certain Stitches offered me a joint because he always does – medicinal, of course. The last thing I remember, though, is a head sticking out of the next door window. It shouted something at us, some variant on “I’m trying to sleep”, and went back inside.

“That’s Aclassi”, he tells me mid-puff. “He’s a Templar. Lives next door.”

“A cop?” I’d only half-placed his face at the raid. It took me a little while to realise they were the same guy. “Is it a good idea to smoke next door to the vice squad?”

“I’m his dealer,” Stitches said mid-laugh. By the time Krem and I really got to know each other, there were plenty of little hints that he wasn’t cut out for Templar life. This was just one that wouldn’t dawn on me until it was just a funny story. I remember The Harts, I remember the blood, I remember the vice cop’s dealer.


	4. The Politics of Beauquand Road

One day, about three weeks before I met Stitches properly, I was doing some heavy lifting for Mahlen. A new shipment of something-or-other, that needed to go someplace-or-another. I didn’t really ask what it was, just accepted that it was a heavy crate that needed hauling over to Beauquand Road. This thing was heavy – I still don’t even really have a guess what it was, but it could have fed an army. Imagine my surprise when this elf opens the door – _no offense_ – who’s skinnier than a beanpole and looks like she’s half-starved to death waiting for it.

“Wow,” I said. I think. It was just one of those little ironies, you know? Something that hits you unexpectedly, and everything seems a little off-balance because of it.

“Put it down on the counter,” The elf replies, and I step into this tiny apartment with this enormous box that only half slides onto mock-marble. There’s no one else in the apartment. It’s a one-bedroom. Clearly this elf lives alone. So, being me, I ask the question.

“You having a party?” Simple enough, right?

She laughs in my face, says that it’s something like that, and I go on my way. Aidan isn’t in that day, so it’s mostly me and the stoic motherfucker that mans the cash register. Another of my Chargers – _if_ you know him, you’ll probably know him as Grim – though it takes a while for him to be anybody other than the guy I say “Hot out there, huh?” to in the vain hope I’ll get a reply that’s longer than one word.

Anyway, a week later I’m carting this heavy crate back to Beauquand Road, and I’m getting Déjà vu, and whaddya know? Another week, another heavy-ass box of Maker-knows-what for the nice elf lady in 4B. Turns out this kinda becomes a thing. Every week, the woman orders a heavy crate of supplies for the week and I deliver it because, surprise surprise, that’s my job. Eventually, about a week after the whole thing with Stitches and Aidan, I get to 23 Beauquand Road, walk into the lobby and find that the elevator is broken. I very nearly broke something carrying that crate up the stairs.

The elf knows this, too. I get invited in, I put the box down, and this time I’m offered a drink for my trouble. It’s been a long day, and I’m exhausted, and that’s how I met Skinner. You might be detecting a pattern here – I met most of my chargers in Trevis. Well, the important ones at least. Team players come and go, but when the situation up at the Vint border got too hot at the end of the Blight, we moved on. None of us were from there – Trevis is a place that only a special breed of folk actually comes from. Either you move on, or you stay forever. I know Aidan’s still there, in a little house about five minutes’ walk from the Candle. His partner, Harel, lives there too. We write to each other sometimes.

*

“I am reminded of my time in Fereldan, during the early days of the blight.” Leliana’s eyes had glazed over slightly, in a way that spoke as much to fond memories as it did to waking nightmares. Sometimes, though Lavellan did not like to admit it, it was easy to forget that UFSF’s emergent Inquisition was mostly made of men and women much older than her precariously-out-of-teenhood self. She was 20, a full ten years behind both Bull and Leliana, though Sera’s 19 acted as a welcome balance.

“You guys restarted a goddamn political movement. A couple of assholes who kept deciding to move cities and play football feels weak by comparison.” Bull was oddly platitudinal, but Leliana’s face made it clear she wasn’t having any of it.

“We were not much more – after the last King and the Prime Minister died, all we knew was that it was no accident. We were just a group of political dissidents who tried to poll well enough to get a seat at the general election.” She smiled, touching her hand to a small token that hung gently from her neck, “River, wherever she is now, was just a Dalish girl who followed a politician to the big city. I was just a nun, sitting in a cloister, dreaming of something bigger. Who can claim to be anything different?”

*

Politics in the Candle were pretty much a nightmare at the time. See, Skinner and I hooked up for a little while. What’d you expect, right? A woman doesn’t invite the grocery boy in unless they’re both willing and eager to make her boss annoyed at how late he is. It didn’t last too long, though. Maybe a half dozen times until we realised that the actual conversations we were having were more worthwhile than the sex. Neither of us wanted a relationship, so neither of us bothered trying. Meanwhile, what we’re talking about is a fringe group that Skinner’s a part of. Queers for a Better Trevis, or something like that. A broad church for some sort of political action, but as is always the case, the enemy was within.

“I mentioned I was bisexual once,” Skinner tells me over a noxious cup of Parshaara coffee. She actually liked the stuff – don’t ask me how a living person possibly could, but she managed it. “Now, funnily enough, I’m only doing fundraising.” It was a pretty common tune – doesn’t matter which neck of the woods you go to, there’s always someone wanting to bounce you at the door. It’s a legitimate fear in a lot of cases – if Candlefucker ever got a man into Skinner’s group, he’d destroy their lives. For most people, though, it’s a replication of their own fear. Maybe, just maybe, if the community is strong, then it won’t fall apart. Grey areas fuck with that.

“Once,” I tell Skinner while choking down coffee, “A guy stopped mid-blowjob when I mentioned I’d been with a girl a few nights previously.” Skinner’s eyebrows raise, and she asks the question: did he not start again? It’s embarrassing to admit that a guy wiped his dick off your lips because you might have put it somewhere questionable, but that’s how things were. You occasionally hear people yelling about identity politics, but for us – hell, you’ll have seen it on Haven street – it was the fear that Arlathan might fall again if everybody wasn’t an elf.

*

“I know what you mean, Bull.” Lavellan ran a finger around the edge of her cup, collecting stray droplets as it passed. “I’m bisexual too, but I haven’t had much chance to prove it, so –”

“You shouldn’t have to prove it,” Leliana interrupted. “When I was on tour, I slept with anyone who might be useful. That does not make me any more or less queer than you. It simply means we have different experiences behind us.”

“I’ll admit,” Sera chimed in, her voice not so much restrained, but perhaps less barrelling-forward than usual, “It’s easy to fall into that hole.” She laughed for a moment at word choice, then collected herself. “See, sometimes it does feel like they’re a day-tripper. I’m 100% team ladylove, and there is a nagging fear that it’s not going to go any further because they have other options.” Leliana began to speak, but Sera interrupted her. “ _But,_ that’s _my_ problem. It’s a problem we’ve given each other, like most problems not a part of the law. Who you want to get with is your own business, just like who I want to is mine. It’s not complicated. We just want it to be because knowing all the rules makes things more stable. Fucking straights, right? They’ve got bloody books on it.”

“Fucking straights,” Bull chimed in, raising a toast.

*

One night, I’m out with this group I can’t quite remember the name of, all I know is it had Queers in the name, and we’ve occupied a corner in some all-night kebab shop. Skinner and I are on the fringe, and suddenly I get why she invited me. It didn’t have anything to do with thinking that I’d be open to it – I’m pretty radical at times, but I’ve got enough of the Qun behind me to keep that lowkey. More power to them, but every time their weedy-looking leader invoked the facist state, I could feel the Candlefucker breathing down our neck. I never had a stomach for activism – so what am I doing in this inquisition, eh? I guess that’s the irony. We’ve got tradition and writ behind us here. They were just a group of queer kids against the world, and I wish I could have done more.

What I did instead, though, was end up in Storvacker’s with Skinner and about a week’s wages worth of drinks. Skinner won’t admit it, but she’s pretty loaded. It’s a family thing – one of the few elven families who managed to make it back when banks hadn’t quite figured out what interest was, and fortunes just keep amassing. She’s buying drinks like it’s going out of fashion, and we’re meeting a whirlwind of new people as Skinner tries to find one she likes. One of the girls, a brunette from Fereldan named Talia, challenged Skinner to a game of pool. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen two women play pool in lesbian bar before, but I was about ninety percent certain someone was about to lose an eye.

Turns out Talia is a pool hustler – a kind of notorious one, too. The entire bar had a chance to tell Skinner not to waste her time, but she was too many drinks in and they were all too amused. The bet kept ramping up, this stocky girl from somewhere south of Amaranthine constantly protesting that “She’ll turn it around, you’ll see, I’ll prove it!”. She played a losing game to get Skinner cocky enough to agree to more ludicrous things. Eventually, Skinner bets a round of drinks for the bar and about five hundred dollars in cash on Talia winning. Now, I’m no pool expert, but I’m pretty sure the term for what happened next was “impossible”. Skinner’s paying out and the bar’s suddenly energised at the prospect of free drinks. I think I risked my neck by laughing at it.

About half an hour passes, and I’m helping Skinner nurse her wounds, when I realise the hustler has moved on. That’s fair, right? Probably not a good idea to hang around. I have to admit, I was starting to feel a little odd-man-out in that Place of Perpetual Ladies Night too, so I said goodbye and headed outside. I’m standing under the dinky little awning outside Stovacker’s bland grey building when Talia comes up and offers me a cigarette.

“No thanks,” I decline, “I’ve had too much to drink. I kinda lose track of my pace and end up either coughing up a lung or letting it burn itself to death.”

“Fair enough,” She replies, lighting up herself. “Sorry about your friend.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say with a half-hearted tone. “We’re just occasional sex-friends. Nothing serious.” She raises her eyebrows, and I laugh a bit more vigorously. “We both run in that grey area, you know?”

“Oh, I know.” She takes a drag of her cigarette, and lets it linger for a moment. “All the best people do.” We stared each other down for a while, talking without saying anything, our eyes just lazily hanging on each other until the sound of drunk bar patrons and passing traffic sounds like cacophonous music.

“We should hang out.” It was a statement more than a question, but I wasn’t going to argue. We did just that. The reason why this story about how Krem and I met starts here is all about context. You need to know about the Candle, you need to know about Talia, and last but not least, you need to know about what’s coming next: _The Rag._


	5. I Was A Camera

For a lot of people, the word ‘freelancing’ is pretty scary. It’s only really picking up steam now, but for most, a steady job is much better. Back in the ‘70s, we hardly used the word at all. That’s what I accidentally fell into, though. See, Skinner hadn’t just invited me to meet her radical sort-of-friends so she could drag me to a lesbian bar afterwards. Instead, it was so I could meet one of their members – Kaloq.

Kaloq was another Qunari – well, not exactly. He’d been Tal Vashoth all his life. It’s one of things that pangs, whether you realise it or not. I grew up with the Qun. Kaloq did not. He once told me that he wondered what I would have been like had I not known it. I have to admit, the pang I felt was the same thought about him.

I was hesitant at first, but once Skinner had slept off her night’s embarrassment and revelry, she called the grocery store and asked if I wanted to meet her and Kaloq after my shift. I saw no reason not to – especially because she was due for another delivery, and it meant I didn’t have to lug the box all the way to Beauquand road.

We met again at Parshaara, though I was the first one there. I remember sitting at the counter for a while, making small talk with Rion. We did this often – I’d sit and order a coffee, he’d ask me all about Seheron.

“I can’t tell you,” I’d say, and he’d laugh.

“The Qun is a lazy old thing if you can’t even talk about it.”

“No,” I’d reply, steeling myself for the inevitable taste of coffee the consistency of tar, “You’d just get too jealous and run back home.”

“Ain’t my home,” He’d say, I’d counter that it is if he wanted it to be, and we’d go back and forth like that until we got bored or interrupted. Playful and teasing, but wary all the same. There’s a lot of tension between those in and out of the Qun. I just want folks to be comfortable with me.

Kaloq and I, though, never quite fell into that dynamic. He was a much more serious man than the Vashoth who ran the local coffee spot. See, Kaloq was co-editor of _The Rag,_ which was about as well-known as someone’s great aunt. At the time, it was a friends and friends-of-friends affair, a largely feminist skewing paper that railed against the injustices of Trevis and the surrounding areas.

There were a couple of oddities – the name was at war with itself. _The Rag_ wasn’t its actual name – that was the whispered joke that declared it a lefty tabloid and declared its status as for the much-maligned ‘Modern Women’, a reputation that seemed at odds with a male co-editor. Truth be told, Kaloq mostly ran the press and paid those that needed it, so even the most separatist-minded members conceded his influence was more of an annoyance than sincere force. Skinner helped fund the thing, but Kaloq had turned to radical politics after four years as an accountant. I understand the change completely.

Kaloq had this idea, you see – mostly that the queer scene was lacking a true biographer but, and this was the kicker, everybody was too enthusiastic about it to be that person.

“What we need,” he pitched me over a noxious cup, “Is a photographer with a Qunari eye.” To him, this meant someone with the trained impartiality of the Qun. He wouldn’t listen to me explain that strict adherence to the point of psychological difference was a deeply offensive stereotype. Instead, he opened the crate that I’d lugged all the way from the market to the café, and removed a camera. Turns out Skinner’s weekly shipments were things for _The Rag_ that were special ordered – ink, paper, printing press parts, whatever there wasn’t a specialty store for in Trevis. We had camera stores, but apparently it was just as easy to get a high-end model from out of town.

*

“A quick side note here: I’m gonna stop calling it _The Rag_ ” _._ Bull was surprisingly adamant about this, and it shocked Lavellan slightly to hear the conviction. “It’s a jokey name, and I hate it, but I can’t bring myself to call it _The Voice Of Trevis_.”

“Ugh, poncey,” Sera asked. “Even the Friends only use the name because it’s old. You can’t invent old.“ She caught herself before Bull could reply, doing the mental math. “Sorry. Shouldn’t slag it.”

“I think it’s earned it,” Leliana laughed to herself, “It’s quite easy to dream of being legitimate when no one gives you the time of day. It’s a lofty goal. It’s also deeply, deeply narcissistic.”

“It is also what the damn thing was actually called,” Bull continued, his tone firm but mirthful, “So, as boring a name as it was, I’m just going to call it _The Mag_ from now on. It was pretty much a magazine. Better a homophone than something worse.” Squire chuckled to herself at his joke, though she did not let him know.

*

So there I was, being offered a camera and the position of ‘Archivist’ for a magazine with a double-digits subscription base and a co-editor who thought I could do the job on the basis of a stereotype. Why he didn’t think I shared strict Qunari sexual politics too, I may never know. I have to admit though, I was damn tempted. I wasn’t interested in the photography – but the thought of being the one to let the world know that, whatever happens, The Candle had existed… I don’t really know how I could have said no.

So I didn’t. I accepted the offer, shiny new camera in hand. I’m still not much of a photographer really, but I got enough practice to at least take a half-decent picture while drunk. A lot of those photos are still around, hanging around in boxes and time-eaten copies of that magazine. Apparently there’s even a little bookshop in Trevis like Dagna’s, and a few of them are framed neatly on the wall. A little peek into history. I’m not sure Trevis is even the same anymore, but at least I was there to see it when it was. If I made it a little easier to remember it, then I probably did an OK job.

To celebrate, Skinner and I decided there was no time like the present. We trundled off to the far edge of the Candle, to a little park where local couples would come to meet and canoodle before the lights went down. It was ‘scandalous’, though I use that term the way a drunk club kid does. Mostly, the park was home to addicts and perverts, the two groups bonded by the knowledge that if they show up, the Good Citizens won’t. There was too much crossover between the two groups even then. I’m not sure if it’s worse now, but folks like Candlefucker didn’t help.

We realised a certain flaw in our methodology almost immediately. It turns out that when you’re pushed to hanging out at park where needles are as common as nettles, you probably don’t want your face recorded for posterity. We tried a few wide angles, and they turned out pretty good I think. It only took a few minutes before we had a very angry looking dwarf tapping her foot in front of us, her face saying everything she was trying not to yell. Once we explained the goal, the slowly gathering crowd dispersed. This, however, lead to a less than ideal situation. We were taking photos of staged scenes. Folk had to agree, and our focus had to stay narrow to avoid catching faces that didn’t consent. No one wanted to risk winding up on a Trevis Templar Police noticeboard somewhere, Perversion Target Numero Uno.

We ended up with a roll of film, and thanks to a makeshift darkroom in the mag’s offices, I learned pretty quickly how to develop a bad photo. No, strike that – I learned how to fuck up a perfectly good one. Over time, however, I got better. Those first few rolls of film, though? Well, better we don’t really talk about it. Qunari hands are perfectly fine for delicate work – the learning curve is a bastard, though.

We changed tactics that night, opting instead to catch the drunken revelries on the Candle itself. We set up a little makeshift booth in front of a brick wall, a cardboard-and-drying-paint sign advertising our goal. We moved around, mostly because of the inevitable police presence, but we had fun. We’d encourage folk to stand in front of whatever wall we had set up at and tell us a story. That was Skinner’s idea – she’s normally a lot more, well, I guess the word is confrontational. That was her part for the mag – outside of funding it, she’d contribute some wordy screed about the state of things. Whenever some tender moment grew around her, it was undoubtedly part of some greater plan. As the night wore on, and we heard more stories, there was a common theme emerging:

“Yeah, isn’t that a fucking _waste_?”

Turns out, Skinner wanted stories for fuel. She was writing her own column – true stories of injustice. Me, though, I didn’t care. That night was full of pain. We had fun, sure, but every story ended up somewhere awful. Maybe it was because Skinner pushed it. Maybe it was just how things were. Maybe it’s just how they still are.

This one guy starts telling us a story, though, and I start taking pictures. He’s slouching against the wall, face a little dour, and I feel for the guy. Skinner’s egging him on. Feeding that rage. _Tell us your story._ I can’t blame her. People were afraid of Degan Tollman. You’ve gotta have the right kind of fear to fight back.

Anyway, he tells us this story. He’s about eight or nine, living in Minrathous – kid’s the son of a Tevinter magister, a bloody Vint come south to live with the rabble. Minrathous is the centre of a lot of bad vibes – there isn’t a social ill they haven’t declared ‘traditional’, ‘Maker-given’ or ‘part of our rich history and the fabric of society’. That last one was said to me quite earnestly by a Vint once. I nearly headbutted him. Anyway, kid’s dad has indentured Elven servants, because of course he does. He’s a magister. One night, he goes down stairs for a glass of water because he can’t sleep, and hears the elf talking. He’s leaving, fired by the Magister. Sounds great for an ‘indentured servant’, right? It puts him at the very bottom. No one wants sloppy seconds, and no one will hire an elf in Tevinter. He can’t afford the bus ride south, and the only direction he could even head on one if he did is to Orlais, which is lucky to let you cross the border if you don’t have money.

Anyway, kid gets his water and goes back to bed, because what’s a kid to do? He considers bringing it up with his father, but he’s young – why would he listen? He keeps it inside, like a good little boy. The elven servant disappears, and the kid grows up. Now, we fast forward about eight years and he’s sneaking into clubs in Weaver’s Street, the makeshift queer district in Minrathous that no one ever talks about. There’s about four clubs that get raided every other night and one café that occasionally lets posters stay up on its notice board. Anyway, he gets inside and this elf comes up to him. Older, ragged looking, had a hard life. He claps hands on either side of the kid, looks him straight in the eyes and says:

“Your fucking dad ruined my life.”

It’s the guy you can’t say was a slave, even though he definitely was. The kid gets the whole story, finally adding context. Elf gets caught with a lover, male as you might have guessed, and though the help doing such a terrible thing is bad enough, that it was the Forbidden and Dangerous Act of Gay Love – well, that was too much. He was sent to die on the street of exposure the minute winter came.

He didn’t die, though. What the kid’s dad didn’t count on was that there were other people out there like him, huddled masses hard done by, and in the end – that was enough. Folks, living their lives, helping each other, trying not to die. The kid fled south the minute he could. He needed to find that for himself, and he wouldn’t find it in his father’s shadow.

He was furious about Degan Tollman and what he was doing. He was young, angry and Skinner was making sure he was ready to fight back. I guess, in many respects, that was the moment that I was too. Like a lot of things, though, that’s yet to come.


	6. Bars and Bars

So, all the pieces are in place for this story to really begin now. You know Trevis, you know Krem, you know _The Mag,_ you know Parshaara and Degan Tollman and Skinner and _Bellanaris_ and all the other little oddities. That was Trevis, of course. A collection of oddities, halfway between two empires nestled gently in another nation’s soil. Nevarran in name, Orlesian in pomp, Tevinter in circumstance.

You would notice this in the bars. I’m out drinking with Aidan one night, because that’s what you do, when I realise there’s a Tevinter coat of arms on the wall. It’s hidden away between tchotchkes, barely visible, and I ask the guy behind the bar about it. He hooks two fingers in the loops of his denim jean-shorts, shrugs bare-shirted at me, and I suddenly start to laugh. Of _course_ the nearly-naked bartender at a place called _Bellanaris_ has no idea why there’s a Tevinter family crest hidden away between wooden halla reliefs and bronzed elvhen paraphernalia.

Have you ever been in a club and just, like, lost it? Suddenly everything seems a little bit too much. There’s too much noise, too many people, you can’t handle the décor or the clothes or the highwaytrash music that’s blaring and you just _get out._ Before anyone knows what’s happening, you’ve stepped outside, breathing deeply like a panic attack but all that’s happened is you found a club to be _too much._ Suddenly the world settles down. You come back to yourself by streetlight. You sit alone on a bench outside a nightclub wondering what it was. I’m still pretty sure it was the family crest someone found at an antique store and decided it looked ‘elfy’ because there was a tree on it. I laugh a little bit more. How could you not?

Some kid sits down next to me, smoking what was clearly a joint, and I turn to see Stitches smiling at me. We exchange pleasantries, the way that someone who’s had a not-really panic attack and the guy who played the boring kind of doctor for a friend does. How’s work, that’s nice, what are you up to, and then he asks:

“How’s Aidan?” And I remember that I’ve left him inside. I laugh. We’re talking gut, bellowing laughter. I don’t really know why. Stitches is as high as anything, so he sets off, and between the pair of us suddenly we’re filling the Candle with that heady, noisy sound of two people with nothing better to do, just enjoying themselves. He offers me a joint, but I decline. Good thing too, because laughter is obvious. It just kind of… carries. Eventually, someone wants to investigate. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes, though, it’s a real shitfest.

“Move along,” Comes a stern but lilting voice behind us. I turn, and there’s this guy. He looks familiar. Cropped hair, firm jaw, daggers coming out of his eyes. I’m trying to place him, trying to figure it out, then the outfit gives it away. He’s a Templar. He’s vice. It’s Krem – and Stitches just says hello with a wave.

“Hell _oooo_ Sailor!” Stitches calls out, and Krem realises. _Aclassi_ realises. He wasn’t Krem yet. He was Cremisius Aclassi, make no mistake, but Krem was a name he earned.

Stitches, after this meeting, regaled me with the full story of meeting the young officer, including but not limited to helping him purge an unexpected helping of an exciting new party drug that happened to be cut with bleach. It wasn’t fatal, but in high doses it could cause the kind of vomiting that led to much worse ailments, rather than the controlled kind where a half-dissolved pill returns to the surface.

Cremisius Aclassi, Stitches informed me, had come to town as a club kid. He was a runaway, fleeing a world that refused to see him as a man. The Candle offered him hope, but it was too much hope too soon. Though Aclassi had never truly been prim and proper, the Candle was not where the well-to-do ended up. Instead, it was a heavy mass of bodies to keep you warm, drugs to keep your mind of the lack of money in your pocket, and shoulders to lean on should you fuck up. That last part isn’t easy, though. You’ve still gotta get lucky. If Cremisius had played his cards right, he would have found that the minute he woke up to a mildly handsome would-be doctor explaining why he shouldn’t accept handfuls of ‘mints’ from strange and leery elves.

Instead, it scared Aclassi straight. Too straight, in fact. Though he still came to Stitches for joints, he signed up to the Templars to try and make sure no one else went through what he did that first night on the cobblestones. That was a bridge too far, though. Degan Tollman wasn’t enabling the Good Queers who wanted to fix things. He was rooting them out and crushing them underfoot. Cremisius Aclassi, who had not yet become Krem and had not earned that name, had made a huge mistake he couldn’t back away from. Tollman was a hawk, and Aclassi had no other usable skills. He couldn’t even transfer to the regular police away from Vice. Instead he was stuck enforcing laws that made him sick, but I didn’t know this at the time. Instead, I looked him square in the eyes and said one thing: “Fuck. You.”

~~ * ~~

“And?” Leliana asked. She had become enthralled in the story, apparently, though Lavellan couldn’t make any claims to being above it all. It seemed so far away, and yet so similar. There were rumblings at the edges of Haven Street of quite similar things, and she was in no position to ignore history.

“And I was booked. Not by Aclassi, of course. We had yet to actually meet, I was just some face and he was just some Templar. I hadn’t even properly clocked who it was. His partner took Stitches and I in for ‘disturbing the peace’, and though Cremisius covered up the fact that Stitches was high as hell, I didn’t call that a point in his favour.” Bull took a swig and laughed, “Now, of course, he’s just Krem, and he calls me a lot worse.”

“Our Bull has a criminal record,” Lavellan mused, “What a surprise.” It was more sardonic than she had intended it, and the comment seemed to catch the Iron Bull off guard.

“Oh, and here I thought you were just humouring me.” The comment stung a little, but she could not help but concede they had made awkward small talk for most of the evening so far. They were of two different worlds – and yet, it seemed, shared too much.

“I remember my first time seeing a queer district,” Lavellan offered. “I was fifteen. The clan was passing through Kirkwall, and we stopped in Lowtown to trade at the market. It didn’t last long. Even the working class don’t appreciate the Dalish taking over their spaces. We moved on quickly, but not before our Aravels rode through the Valhail. My face was glued to the side of the caravan, taking in each and every unexpected sight. There it was, plain as day, folks just _living._ We went past the Hanged Man, past a florist and a camera store, I even remember the corner shop, isn’t that wild?”

Lavellan became quickly aware of how passionate she had become. It was so easily read in the faces of those around her, and how their expressions had turned from genuine interest into something more resembling humouring her. She laughed as she realised, and conceded the floor back to The Iron Bull.

“Finish that story sometime,” He said quietly. “There’s no worthless stories when it comes to your own.”

~~ * ~~

Lockup in Trevis is a dingy little cell with no light and a drunk old officer who falls asleep while ‘keeping an eye on you’. It was the most terrifying place in the world. If you were lucky, you left with a sore back from the wooden benches. If you were gay, you left with a few bruises and a back that hurt for very different reasons. If you were a gay and black and elven, well, that’s too bleak even for this story.

We had two points in our favour, though: it was a busy night, so most of the idle cops who might wander past were actually out on the streets. Second, I’m a fucking mountain. Even a guy with a nightstick at least thinks about it for a moment. That doesn’t mean nobody tried, but lockup isn’t private, and we got damn lucky.

You become better friends when you spend a night behind bars, I think. Even if – as we did – it was only a couple of hours before they decided we were low-risk and they needed the space for a couple of drunken brawlers. By the time we were set loose on the world, we’d spent the past few hours talking about ourselves. Nothing heavy – I told him about my new job as a photographer, he told me about moonlighting with the ‘angels’. They would pick a night, go out in twos or threes, and keep watch on the street. Not full anti-fascist like some more radical members of the Candle set, but folks like Stitches knew that if someone got hurt or injured, not even an ambulance drove fast to Candlekeep’s Way.

~~ * ~~

Sera laughed, loud and sudden. The table flinched, caught off guard by the eruption.

“Something funny?” Bull asked, a little indignant. It was a fair ire, but Sera waved it off.

“Sorry, sorry, you just, you know, he sounds like a Jenny.” She smiled broadly as a few pieces clicked together in Squire’s mind. Bull’s own expression softened as understanding dawned, though he remained somewhat startled.

“Do you _have_ any Jennies in Trevis?” He asked pleasantly, but Lavellan could not help but detect a hint of frustration over being interrupted. She shot him a look, to which he graciously conceded.

“Probably. I forget, we have them all over the place. Well, not _all_ over, but there’s a mailing list someone keeps.” She pressed two fingers to her forehead, eyes scrunched together. Leliana moved to ask, but she simply said “Thinking” before she could open her mouth. After a moment, she snapped her fingers and proudly exclaimed two words: “Fuck knows!”

“Uh…” Lavellan didn’t want to ask the question, but she couldn’t help herself. “Is Fuck a person…?”

“No, dingus.” She found the question terribly amusing, at least. There was something about Sera that endeared her greatly to Lavellan, though the Dalish elf could not place what exactly it was. Something about the combination of attributes. She was just earnest enough to mean what she said, just forthright enough to own her own eccentricities. “Fuck knows as in ‘Fuck if I know’. If was just a kid back then. The Jennies have been around much longer than me, and will probably outlive me.”

“Sera,” Leliana asked pleasantly, “What is it about the Red Jenny thing that gets you all these members?”

“We’re just folk who want change without being told ‘no’. No is rubbish.” As she spoke, a heavy plate of fries arrived from the kitchen. Bull, Leliana and Squire traded looks of confusion, but Sera began eating with enough conviction that they must have been meant for her. Lavellan was not entirely sure when she had ordered them, but shrugged it off.

“ _Well,_ ” Bull finally resumed, “The truth of the matter was that you at least _did_ have a Jenny in Trevis when I was there.”

“Shut _up!_ ” Sera exclaimed, mouth full of fries. “For real? You knew the Jenny?”

“Apparently. Only now do I actually know what it means – at the time, I just thought she was odd. Actually, it’s coming up in the next bit. Uh… I think.” He paused, scratching a horn with vigour. “Where… Where was I?”

“You were getting out of the klink and Stitches was apparently the nicest human being ever to smoke a joint.” Leliana smiled, waving over a couple more beers.

“Was that a joke, Sister?” Lavellan raised an eyebrow, amused.

“Even the Maker has a sense of humour,” She retorted as a beer found its way into her hand, “Otherwise he’d strike down whoever brews this swill.”


End file.
